[Weekly Top X]tra, Xtra! Read All About It!

So.

Apparently, Games Workshop wants you to cease and desist talking about what might be going on with their games in the future. At least, on blogs hosted by Blogger.

I am reminded, at this stage, of something my old mate and alleged co-author Lexington once drew, waaay back when he was being politely spoken to by the Reichstag's Foreign Affairs office - drawing GW's IP-protecting policy to its extremely illogical conclusion, he inferred that one day we might be playing with imaginary models on an empty board, and paying GW for the privilege of doing so. I mean, there's no way we could steal their ideas then, is there?

Tempting as it is to run the full researcharama and actually find out exactly what's going down in Workshop-town, I haven't the time, or the patience, or the willingness to sift through hysterical forum discussions and, to be honest, if I were going to investigate corporate intrigue and the silencing of citizens' voices, I might start with something a teensy bit more serious and important than toy soldiers.

If you haven't read Transmetropolitan, you should.

Therefore, the only thing to which I'll be linking on the matter is Blood of Kittens' call for a little common sense, a little awareness of how corporate IP protection strategies tend to work, a little reading of the actual announcements made by the people involved, and a little less chestbeating. Oh, and some sneering at the expense of Warseer, because it wouldn't do to be entirely sensible about these things when we could rake over the coals of nerd drama, would it?

The rest of your Weekly Top X coverage will be about, y'know, actual hobby stuff.

For those of you who are still remotely interested in WFB, Hero's Gaming Blog has some stuff on the spangly new High Elves. It's long past the point where removing army-wide Always Strikes First that isn't actually called Always Strikes First and thus operates outside the hard counters to that rule actually matters to me, but it's still nice to see. Also, they have a phoenix, and I'm quite keen on the phoenix, as mythological creatures go.

The Dice Abide offers some reflection on the ways to play WFB - specifically, taking a good hard swing at the paper tigers of composition scoring, banning bits of the game that you don't like, and the ETC restrictions pack. I think we've established, by this stage, that I don't think any edition of WFB except sixth has been something I'd care to play at tournament level, and that was largely an accident of the Ravening Hordes approach to redrawing the armies. That said, I'm broadly in accord with what Adam suggests here.

Quarantine World reviews one of the worst books I've ever read and, thankfully, doesn't approve of it. It doesn't mention that Nick Kyme's prose is, at the sentence level; both awkwardly paced and clunkily phrased - with the net effect that the eye stalls. With every sentence - stopping and starting like an under-maintained engine. It catalogues the rest of the book's faults with care, however, and for that, it gets a thumbs up from me.

Outsyder Gaming has a non-boring Pathfinder session report for you. I'm never sure how I feel about session reports, but I like this one for its glimpses into the GM's process, thoughts about the genre of the campaign, and sources for resources used in play. If you're gonna do it, do it like this and don't just tell me about your paladin.

Tales from the Warzone says Malifaux is going into its second edition and that Wyrd are running a public beta test. Saw this coming; Malifaux's a good laugh but it was born bloated and it's only gotten worse, while public beta testing worked out pretty well for Privateer Press, all told, and I'd like to see it become the norm.

Wargaming Tradecraft's gone all gelatinous this week, and is showing us how to make textured trees the quick way (rather than the Von way, which involves floristry wire, Milliput, a toothbrush, cheap artists' ink and a lot of swearing and mess - but which is quite good fun). Get it down yer gob.

Neverness Hobby has dug out the Battlemasters box and by Eris' waffle iron that thing is immense. The post, as well as the set; Neverness is well aware that Battlemasters will be news to most of us and is doing a fine job of showing and telling us the basics of what looks like it just might be a crackin' good game.

The Dark Templar shows us a step-by-step guide to painting fussy, detailed figures - it starts with priming and airbrushing and will, I hope, press on with a similar level of detail for each day of the project. I've never been keen on long, drawn-out painting processes myself, but I understand they're the norm among people who actually enjoy painting and want stuff to be the best, rather than people who mildly dislike painting and just want stuff to be done and not rubbish.

Lorenzen's Abyss, meanwhile, has a similar step-by-step guide to tabards. Given that I am a clumsy sausage-fingered oaf-creature, I am always in need of careful, detailed instructions for sculpting, including accounts of what can go wrong and why it's not working like it does in the pictures. Lorenzen delivers, warning for pitfalls and perils at the key stages and explaining with care but without smugness why you're doing everything that you're doing. It's pretty neat.

Aaaand that's your lot for the week! Go! Read blogs! Raus raus!